Habits
by miss selah
Summary: An open window. A closed heart. A promise that’s a lie that’s a dream. Old habits die hard. [Kagome Sesshoumaru] [Kagome Inuyasha] [Kagome Kikyo]


* * *

**Habits**

* * *

Sea shell wind chimes make a sound like the ocean in her window as a cold, early winter breeze blows by as she pretends to do her homework in the same way that she's pretending to live. It's long after midnight, and the cold is biting her arms, but she sits up still, scratching a name in to her paper over and over and over as she waits for him, because maybe tonight is the night that he is going to notice that she's gone, and maybe tonight's the night that he's going to pull her back, just like old times.

"Kagome?" A knock on the door, a brother's worried voice. A sign of hope that she is choosing to ignore, the same way that she ignores the pain in her stomach in her bones in her heart. "Please Kagome. Quit blaming yourself. He's just being a jerk – you guys weren't actually dating, so he has no right to get mad at you when you –"

Kagome doesn't hear him, though. Because she's staring in horror at the I N U Y A S H A that became the letters S E S S H O U M A R U somewhere along the way. She crumbles the paper, ripping it a bit, before she throws it in the garbage, pulling out a new piece.

Be more careful. Watch your kanji. I N U Y A –

* * *

A fire burns merrily in the center of the group, trying to do Kagome's job of keeping up the spirits, but failing miserably. It cracks, the sound of pitiful firecrackers, and lights up the sleeping faces of the humans, wrapped up inside of fur. And it watches over the demons that sit awake, cold and lonely. "Inuyasha," Shippo asks, tired and sniffling. "When is Kagome going to be coming back?"

Inuyasha is spared Shippo's questions during the day, because he turns and looks away from all the betrayed glances that his 'friends' give him. But at night, it is impossible to escape the child, who has lost his protector, as well as th warm arms that hold him in his sleep. The same, as it turns out, as the rest of them.

"She'll come back when she's ready." Inuyasha lies, because he knows that he has chased her away for good this time, and he's only suffering withdrawals.

Shippo doesn't tell him that he knows that, too.

* * *

Somewhere along the line, Kagome had stopped being K I K Y O and started to live her life as H E R S E L F. But now she's a shell, the same way that Kikyo was a shell, a temple for the Gods of time that used her and abandoned her the moment they were done with her.

Shards in the future, the jewel could never be completed in the past. So all she had to do now was sit and hope and wait. Something better had to come along eventually. If she didn't believe that, then what was the point?

* * *

The girl had been a mistake.

A passing whim, a moment of idiocy. Why in the world he had found her attractive, even for a moment, he had no idea. Why she found him attractive, her allies brother, her enemy, was even more incomprehensible.

He can't forget her.

His brother had caught them, naked and bared and loving, the same way he had always suspected that Kagome would one day catch him with Kikyo, but didn't. "You didn't love me!" Kagome had screamed.

"He doesn't either!" But Sesshoumaru had. He loved her well enough.

Sesshoumaru stands by the well, staring down in to it's dark, mystic depths, because he knows that this is where she lives, just beyond his reach, and he wishes.

When he's done wishing, he goes to see a man about a girl.

* * *

Kikyo doesn't come by the group now the the miko is gone. What's the point? There is no fun in tormenting the others – Inuyasha is just a simpering fool, the runt a child, the cat an animal, and the human's distractions. The miko, though, the copy of herself, had been great fun.

It was so rare that she got a raise out of anyone – whether it be because she was soft, or because she was a woman, or because she was strong. No one dared to foil her, though, before the girl-child.

Jealousy had been a bitter seed in her soul, and Kikyo did so love to watch it twist and coil and grow, strangling her with it's poisoned saplings, the same way that it did to Kikyo every time that she saw Kagome looking at Inuyasha with the same adoring eyes that he used on her.

No matter. She was gone now, whatever the fool had done, and she was 500 years outside of her reach. She was thoroughly out of any of their reaches, and Kikyo was more than a bit put out by the fact.

The first demon she found, she decided, she would give the poisoned shikon shards in her pocket to. At least then, she knew, Inuyasha would get a lashing for his insolence.

* * *

She sees the men and women and passing cars, but she's thinking about swords and brothers and things long past.

She is waiting for one of them to find her. Serendipity, hope, wait wait wait.

Otherwise there isn't any point.

* * *

"What do you _mean _she's not coming back?!" Sesshoumaru demands, his claws at his brother's throat, her allys far behind them, but coming fast.

"I. Mean. That. She. Doesn't want. To deal with. YOU!" Inuyasha's breathing was tempered, and each word caused Sesshoumaru's claws to dig farther in to the skin.

It's a lie. They both know it.

Sesshoumaru leaves him, bleeding on the ground, to seek other advise.

Kikyo watches from the shadows, biding her time and waiting for the prize.

* * *

Repetition dulls the mind, and imagination dulls the senses. Kagome has lost her ability to do the later, and her will to do the first.

Her window is open every night, because she figures that eventually, one of them is going to come for her, whether they had waited five hundred years or just got over themselves long enough to use the well. Meanwhile, she covers her bed with three comforters, because the winter chill is doing nothing for her 'artheritis' or any of the other diseases that her grandfather has given her by proxy.

But it certainly does help to soothe her heart. . .

* * *

Kikyo stands by the well. She can't get through, but she can call.

She sends out a heart song, a beckon to Kagome. Their hearts beat to the same drum, so she knows that Kagome can hear it.

Kagome hears the song. Kagome dreams.

* * *

It has been months since Kagome has seen the past, and she feels lost in the sea of the ignorant, and she is forgetting, and she feels everyday that she has traded one thing for another.

A smile, a hello, she pretends to live. Just like everybody else. The worst part is that she didn't even want it.

* * *

And no one comes.

After a while, though, they all forget who someone is.

But Kagome keeps her window open, no matter the extremes.

And Inuyasha shuffles around impatiently, wishing and wishing and wishing on little pink shards of glass.

And Sesshoumaru wanders and wonders, and is vaguely aware that something is wrong, but can't figure out what.

And Kikyo stands by an old dry well, a clump of clay and then a withered woman and then a ghost, and sings with her heart.

And they pretend to live.

* * *

Anonymous Fangirl: Well, that was different.


End file.
